Every Time That We Love
by the e t e r n a l -STORY
Summary: They fall in love in their own ways. He supports her when she falls- she gives him reason to keep caring; a delicate state of balance. "Always and forever." Next!Gen 8059 oneshot.


**Every Time That We Love**

**Summary:** They fall in love in their own ways. He supports her when she falls- she gives him reason to keep caring; a delicate state of balance. "Always and forever." Next!Gen 8059.

**-**

When Emi falls in love, she falls head over heels.

Maybe it's fate, maybe it's just a plan gone wrong. Shirou is like a brother. Like Katashi. They have been childhood playmates since the time they learned how to use a gun, since the first time their homes were raided- tender ages, innocent eyes exposed to the world their parents toyed with so easily.

_("I'll never be strong like daddy." Katashi had whimpered one night in Vongola Castle, and Alessa had put him straight at once. "You're as much of a man as Big 10, Tashi-kun, if you'd open your stupid eyes and see it." and he'd never so much as implied the concern afterwards, or at least not in Alessa's earshot.)_

So when she first falls in love, it's all because of a plan gone wrong. She plans to just pretend to get close to Shirou. It pisses daddy off, Uncle Takeshi doesn't give a shit, and Shirou doesn't mind at all. And then that is the first time he catches her when she falls, because she's 11 and stupid and wants to be grown up before her time- heels and a dress, to one of the fancy Vongola gatherings everyone gets so sickeningly _formal_ for.

_(She would later dryly note to him that his catching her when she fell would become something akin to a trend, he would laugh and snuggle into her neck with a kiss because that annoyed her and she always let him do it anyway.)_

It's a simple enough thing. They are walking because the tables are occupied by people politely picking at food so nauseatingly rich that they would declare it was delicious and dump it in the bin when no one was looking, Emi had grown up with mafia and she knew what they did. And then, she trips.

And it would have ended in a humiliating faceplant onto the ground, except that Shirou (in his fancy suit with the tie that Uncle Takeshi had clumsily done up for him) catches her, with his brown eyes open wide and a grin forming on his lips. "Whoa, Emi." He smiles and she can feel the blush forming on her face. "What's the rush?" God that's embarassing, what the fuck has she just done, thank God Shirou was there or that would have been so _humiliating_.

"_Porca vacca_." She curses loudly as she gets her balance back. Her Italian was by no means perfect- but she was her father's daughter, and she'd be damned if she didn't know how to swear. Tittering rises around her at her language, and she catches Uncle Takeshi and her father looking at them, and this wicked little idea pops into her head.

So she straightens up and placed a chaste little kiss onto Shirou's cheek, and he blinks at her in confusion but just smiles. God, Shirou can be such an idiot, but it _works_ because her dad is over there right now practically choking Uncle Takeshi across the table, and only her mother's firm grip and calm face in her father's temper is keeping him back.

It starts as a game to piss her dad off, but it changes and evolves, and she's stuck before she knows it. Stuck with an idiot.

But the thing is, he's _her _idiot.

-

Somewhere in the back of his mind, when it all begins, he knows that she's just toying. He knows that Emi isn't serious. He's spoken with her before: about disappointment, about pain. He understands, like all they do. When the parents are gone for weeks at a time. When they miss Christmas and birthdays and God knows however many more holidays that are about family but are never acknowledged because family isn't there. She hates her father, and no amount of talking will get her to take it back. Emi is a veritable spitfire when she's convinced of something. But he never believes Uncle Hayato deserves such hatred.

She is so like her father, in ways she won't admit.

"Always be kind to a lady." His father is always telling him, with a sly wink and a bright grin teetering on the point of appearance. Then he would do something stupid and embarrassing and so obviously _dad-like. _He'd spin mother around, or plant a kiss on her lips, and she'll always squeal and bat him away because that's what his parents are like.

So when he catches Emi during that Vongola party _(It was the winter of '31, he would always tell her later with a cocky grin on his face, and she would smack him across the head that if he put his mind to memorizing useful shit instead of half the crap that he remembered, he might not be an idiot)_ he doesn't expected anything in return. But when she places that kiss on his cheek, he allows himself to believe, if for a moment, that he is important.

And most importantly, _not_ just a vessel for revenge. Everyone can have their delusions, right?

-

Katashi's not usually one to mess around with Emi but she's surprised, at 12, when he has the balls to come up to her and tell her to her face that she's hurting Shirou.

And of course she laughs, a loud, derisive laugh that bounces around the room because who knew Katashi cared? "Shirou doesn't give a damn." She tells him, and the look of pain that passes across her little bro's face is enough to tell her otherwise. "I'll stop teasing him, if you don't bother me about this again." She sighs loudly, and turns back to the piano. Katashi stays in the room for another minute as she plucks out a handful of thoughtful chords, distracted.

He leaves, and the door closes onto the sunlit room. It's beautiful. Feliciana always tells her daughter it's her daddy's favorite room in the house. Thin white curtains cover wide, yawning windows with a view of Italian countryside and lake. But she will die before she admits that she understands why her dad loves it so much.

She practices the rest of the afternoon, but all the notes sound hollow and devoid of emotion.

Empty.

_(Your piano-playing is always beautiful, Shirou would murmur into her ear when she sat down at the worn instrument. She had begun because of Auntie Bianchi, and in the beginning she hated it because it was something associated with her dad but Auntie Bianchi would just shrug, you can't betray blood, and if you're really strong like I think, Emi-chan, you can make it your _own_.)_

_-_

It's one of the few times Shirou can ever recall getting angry at Katashi, because Katashi has this thing about him. You can't get angry at Sawada Katashi. It's like kicking a puppy. A defenseless puppy.

"You told her what!?" He shouts, he's really truly shouting and he can tell Katashi's stunned because even though Emi screams about everything _("Girls PMS so much." He whispers to Katashi whenever she goes on a rampage and he always nods in affirmation)_ Shirou never, ever raises his voice and it cracks because puberty's a _bitch_.

"I told her to stop teasing you." Katashi replies, and his voice is shaking a little bit and Shirou can already feel the anger that bubbles in his chest die and flicker. "She's hurting you."

"Aw, man...Katashi..." And Shirou can't say it out loud, but he's grateful and desparing all at the same time, because now Emi's just going to ignore him and that's worse than being aimlessly led on.

"Maybe it's time to turn your affections elsewhere, Shirou." His dad had told him once, a month, maybe two, ago. When he finally notices the way his son follows around the Gokudera girl like a fish to water, hopelessly devoted.

"Don't be stupid, Dad." Shirou had scoffed, his father's trademark grin lighting up his face. "I don't like Emi, alright?"

_I don't like Emi. I don't like Emi._

He wishes it were true.

-

It's a rare day out, they're 13 and the weather is lovely and perfect and beautiful, and Emi's ready to tear Hitomi's head off because he's teasing her about her chest.

"Why are you even wearing a bikini?" The boy cackles laughing, before Rin beats his head in and Uncle Ryohei stands by laughing so hard she thinks he might piss himself. Good job being a fucking babysitter, Uncle Ryohei.

"Don't take it to heart." Alessa ruffles her hair, but Alessa doesn't have anything to worry about because contrary to Emi's practically stick-like figure, Alessa's fucking _huge_. If it isn't for the fact that she's had Emi double and triple check the knots on her older sis's own bikini, she'd be sure that thing was going to fall off at any second.

So Emi sits there at the water park, fuming. And thank God Shirou saves the day, because the thoughtless idiot hops forward and laces their fingers together, dragging her towards a massive slide even though she's going to kill someone at any second and Katashi's biting his lower lip in fear and Alessa's got this face on that's like "_Oh shit-"_

"Emi-chan." He calls, and she freezes in her attempts to break free for a moment, nearly falling over as he comes to a sudden stop. Of course, he catches her before anything of the like can happen. "Come on, no one cares if you're flat or not, you're perfect as you are. Now let's go play on the slide!"

_(I caught you again! Shirou always gleefully cries when he hears the tale, and Emi grudgingly concedes that victory to him.)_

And Hitomi groans and Itsuki rolls his eyes at the hopelessly romantic statement but Emi's heart flutters for a moment before she calms it down, and she looks at Shirou in a new light for the rest of that day because maybe, maybe, he's more than just the Vongola playmate from preschool, maybe he's more than just her father's coworker's son, maybe he's more than the Yamamoto Shirou she always sees and overlooks.

And she falls in love.

-

School's a nightmare to Shirou, but he's glad that his dad and ojii-chan are so easy-going about it. Math's a mess, his English is barely passable, and he wonders why he can speak Italian but the finer aspects of this other language just seem to elude him.

But he doesn't regret his so-called stupidity because some days Emi stays by after school to sigh and grouch and pull up her seat to his desk so that she can look at his workbook with him, their heads so close they're nearly touching, her breath fluttering onto his face as she watches him work out those stupid equations and correct him when he goes wrong. He smells her shampoo.

"You smell like fruit." He remarks one day, because he's always honest like that, and she flushes.

"You would notice, _yakyuu-baka._" She taunts him with her father's old jab, and he doesn't care. He's never cared. Because he's figured out a long time ago that Emi's insults shroud hidden meanings. "You idiot." She'll laugh, "You're so stupid," and she really means "I love you."

He sees the way she self-consciously sniffs her hair when she thinks he's not looking that afternoon, notices how her face goes pink and her hands tighten around her books in a way that's just adorable, and knows that even if the battle's far from being won, he's taken the first step, and that's enough for him.

Shirou is patient. More patient than Emi knows. And he falls in love so many times over, while he waits.

-

They recognize each other, as classmates, as friends, but only the outsiders see them for what they really are.

"Blinded lovers." Alessa will put forth, her 17 year old eyes_ (lined with mascara and whatnot like a tanuki)_ wide for dramatic effect.

"Warring ones, more like." Katashi will groan, while Rin and Hitomi put forth their statements that the two are "Extremely hopeless" while Itsuki decides they're "Pitifully blind herbivores."

Even Itsuki can see it, Kenji will moan. His poor, adorable cousin is so stubbornly blind, when she wants to be. And Shirou is just as bad, when it comes to _her_.

-

Maybe it's purely hormonal, because they're 15 and teenagers and horny and infinitely stupid. It begins as a hug, something that happens when people reunite, she assures her tight-lipped father. "I'm sure you'll recognize it as a custom."

Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Gokudera will say with his own special brand of it, and she'll roughly bark out something that's supposed to be a laugh.

It is stupid. Shirou had been out of school for a long time, with his dad in Italy. She finally gets to go to Italy too, but only for one gathering (I wouldn't take you if it weren't impolite not to, father will insist) but she sees him and he scoops her into a hug.

_(You give good hugs, she'll say. And it's one of the few compliments she gives him, but he appreciates it all the more. She likes the comforting warmth that surrounds her, he loves how she melts into his embrace. It's like symbiosis! He declares, and she rolls her eyes. Typical Shirou.)_

"You still smell like fruit." He mutters, and she jabs him in the side.

"You smell like cologne, retard." She hisses back, and he chuckles because that's how he always reacts to insults. And they hug. And hug. And hug.

There's a quiet cough off to the side, because Shirou and Emi's hands are traveling a bit lower than courtesy demands, and her dad is looking a little pale and Uncle Takeshi's laughing with Auntie Haru practically falling over, and she finally finds herself yanked away, dazed and confused, because the words Shirou had whispered into her ear were surprising and a little unsettling and all too much of a shock to her. She can't even hear her dad's whispered threats and Shirou shrugs at her as she glances back, holding up his phone.

_Text me later_. He's trying to say, since she's not going to be let go by her dad anytime soon. She mutely nods, as Gokudera pushes her into a chair and orders a flute of champagne for himself, Feliciana rolling her eyes and trying to calm him.

She's stunned and blindsided, because that one hit her when she never expected it coming.

-

**Yamamoto Shirou **has signed in as **baseballfreakk  
Gokudera Emi has** signed in as **BomBergrrL**

**baseballfreakk says: **Wow, Uncle Hayato freaked  
**BomBergrrL says: **ikr?  
**baseballfreakk says: **Is he pissed at us?  
**BomBergrrL says: **like u wouldn't believe  
**baseballfreakk says: **I'm srry.  
**BomBergrrL says:** It's cool.  
**BomBergrrL says:** ...Did you mean it?  
**baseballfreakk says: **?  
**BomBergrrL says: **YAMAMOTO SHIROU DON'T PLAY STUPID W/ ME  
**baseballfreakk says:**?!???!?!?! WHAT? O_______O  
**BomBergrrL says: **Did u mean it or not?  
**baseballfreakk says:** Mean what?  
**BomBergrrL says: **ur so STUPID  
**baseballfreakk says: **I rly don't get what I did D;  
**BomBergrrL says: **so stupid  
**BomBergrrL says:** k  
**BomBergrrL says:** Did u mean it when you said I looked beautiful? &...&the other thing?  
**baseballfreakk says:** y would I say it if i didn't mean it? D:  
**BomBergrrL says:** ... :P  
**baseballfreakk says:** Emi y r u calling me stupid? its true. You're beautiful. & I meant the other thing too.  
**BomBergrrL says:** thx. Now I have to burn my phone before daddy aka the CENSORER throws it away  
**baseballfreakk says:** LOL  
**BomBergrrL says:** ...well thx anyway. it made my day  
**baseballfreakk says:** RLY? :D  
**BomBergrrL says:** rly.  
**baseballfreakk says:** Would u believe me if I said u made mine?  
**BomBergrrL says:** LOL flatterer  
**baseballfreakk says:** No lie. I missed u.  
**BomBergrrl says:** ...missed u 2.  
**baseballfreakk says:** ^______________^

-

Shirou uses the "l" word a lot, and always when he means it. He loves baseball. He loves his family. He loves the mafia life. He loves his friends.

He could compare her to a dozen things that he loves. The feeling of hitting a home run. The smell of lilies- his favorite. Getting an A in class, making his father proud. But he won't, because he knows Emi hates sentimental bullshit like that. Emi likes things simple. She is proud and beautiful and fierce and he associates her with the sound of piano chords, the smell of fruit salad, the storm brewing on the horizon.

And he means it, when he tells Emi he loves her.

-

"Are you guys together?" Rin asks with wide eyes, because this is the first time in public Emi's ever willingly held hands, the first time that she's even conceded without a fight to it and it's like a small miracle.

Shirou looks over to the side a bit, wondering what Emi will think of that question, because she sends him smiley faces through text and they certainly talk in their special way, but they haven't brought up the "d"-ating word yet and he isn't sure what to think.

But Emi raises her chin, and smiles. "Yeah." She shrugs like it's old news, like she hasn't just kicked Shirou's heart into jump start and like she's totally, completely indifferent. "We are."

She misses the look of relief that crosses his face, and he misses the one that crosses hers when she looks away into the distance.

Shirou is happier than he's been in a long, long time.

-

She doesn't know how she makes it through the school days, if not for him. When some snobby Italian student walks up and asks her why she's wearing what she is and she gets pissed, when they question her Japanese background with her Italian blood, her Japanese boyfriend.

"He can't even speak Italian." He hisses disdainfully, an eye trained on the laughing boy. "You could do so much better."

Emi's nearly seeing red, she can think of a dozens upon dozens of ways to make this boy suffer in torment for the insult he's just given her and Shirou, but there's a comforting warmth wrapping around her now and she sinks back into Shirou's embrace.

Shirou presses his lips to her ear, before murmuring "He's an idiot, isn't he?" in perfect, flawless Italian. The boy goes pale and scuttles off, just in time, because they both fall to pieces in laughter.

"That's the only phrase you know."

"It worked, didn't it?"

And without any warning, she falls in love again.

-

A brief peck on the cheek, a shared glance by accident. Every touch and smile they collect, because time is precious and fleeting and they never have enough with each other. High school is arduous and tiring, and sometimes he sees Emi at her worst. Sometimes she snaps.

But she's grateful that Shirou is always there, that he never gives up, because she is the brightest star in his life and he is the pillar that supports her, in a neverending circle _(Symbiosis again! He cackles, maddeningly, and she laughs with him this time because he's right.)_

-

"I don't like it." Gokudera will gripe every time he sees them. "It's just weird and unnatural and I don't like it."

"Maa, maa, Gokudera." Yamamoto will smile, and Tsuna laughs when he sees his friends reflected in their children, as Emi fusses over how Shirou's knotted his tie weird and how you can _still _see the stupid cuts from weapons training the other day on his neck. He laughs and tells her to calm down, as they dance.

"I knew sending them to an Italian high school would be a terrible idea." Gokudera mutters darkly. The formal. The dance. It is one of the few things Emi's ever obsessed over. And because of the final slow dance number, he has the best seat to watching his daughter dance with the baseball idiot's son.

"But she's happy, Gokudera." Tsuna tells his right-hand man, and Gokudera grudgingly agrees. Yamamoto's practically beaming a spotlight onto the floor with his smile.

"She better be pretty damn happy." Gokudera puts a cigarette into his mouth, but at the insistent glares of his oldest friends, he doesn't light it. "Or I'll break the mini baseball idiot's neck."

_(You were pretty handsome then, Emi will remark to him later, and Shirou's face will always brighten up when she says it. Too bad you can't dance worth shit, she'll laugh a moment later, and he laughs with her because he knows it's true and that even with that, it was the best night of their high school life.)_

-

Shirou hands out love like it's limitless, he tosses it out by the handfuls until it's meaningless and overlooked, wide grins and warm hugs, his affection is bright and unable to be ignored. Emi keeps hers close, huddled against her chest, only passing it on with murmured words and gentle smiles, brief kisses and so faint, you may never realize you've received it.

For that, Shirou treasures it all the more.

-

It begins as a simple problem and ends in a clear resolution. Like candy, or rainbows, he laughs, and Emi stares at him like he's crazy.

"What do candy or rainbows have to do with anything?" And she's incredulous because she never believes anyone can be as stupid as him, and Shirou just laughs it off because no one ever understands the connections he makes or how he chooses to describe them.

"I guess it's like this." He thinks. "You wonder about the candy or the rainbows, should I enjoy the candy, should I admire the rainbow? And the answer's so simple. Yes."

"Neh?" She flips her hair over her shoulder, her silver hair that she's growing out because he told her she looked pretty with it longer, and her glasses put on lopsided because she's studying for college entrance exams and she needs to concentrate. "Are you calling me crystallized sugar and refracted light?"

Silver earrings _(like chandeliers! He tells her in delight, they're nothing like chandeliers you imbecile, she responds)_ hang from her ears. He thinks she's the most beautiful when she's like this, not all covered in makeup and glossed for public viewing, but when she's stretched out on the couch _(textbook in her lap with t-shirt and sweats on)_ because it's the casual kind of beauty that only Emi can pull off, and the kind she only lets certain people see.

"You're stupid." She laughs.

"You're beautiful." He replies, the words coming naturally and truthfully to his lips, and she shakes her head at him when he leans over for a kiss.

She'll reciprocate, of course. Because Yamamoto Shirou has captured her heart in a way no one else has ever before or will again.

-

Shirou knows how to say "I love you" in at least a dozen languages. But they never mean much, until he hears it from her lips and he can murmur it back.

He can tell her she's beautiful and perfect and lovely a thousand times over, and they all give her the same euphoric feeling, as she collects them all in her heart like precious gems.

They are cut from very nearly the same cloth of a mafia-intwined upbringing _(one boy who can't swing a sword but can swing a bat; one girl whose relationship with her father is as rocky as the shore of a beach) _and they're not cut to match perfectly- they can argue, they can squabble over tiny things that mean nothing the next day, but they are cut to fit and always will. Lightning and Storm, interlocking and interacting forever, because with the Storm comes Lightning, and with the finale of crashing staccato Thunder, both retreat.

"Stay with me?" He'll ask her one day, as they both stare out of the window at the rain pelting their window.

"Don't be stupid." She'll scoff back. "You know the answer already." A peal of thunder and flash of lightning splits the sky.

"Always and forever?" He's grinning, she can tell.

"Of course."

-

**The title comes from "No One Can Touch Us" by Sing It Loud (ft. Alex Gaskarth) because it just fit too well. I adore the song and I think it encompasses their relationship. An entire fic on 8059 next!gen! Ah, Shirou and Emi. :) My friend read this for me and we were talking about it because it reminded us both of something, when we both realized (simultaneously) that it is very much inspired by a fic I read earlier that I can't find now...She can't recall it either...oh my. **

**Criticism is much loved, reviews are wholeheartedly appreciated.**

**- the e t e r n a l -STORY**


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